How to Update Old Blog Posts (and Why You Should) Written by AMAN SINGH
If you have been blogging for a long time, then you have some posts that can be updated to bring them back to life and increase website traffic. This article will tell you how to update old blog posts to get more traffic.
Do you know, your old posts can give you 50% traffic boost? Yes… you heard right. You just need to update your old blog posts with the latest information. When you update the old blog post, then your traffic and reader will increase. Apart from this, it increases user engagement on your blog and reduces the bounce rate. This article will provide complete guide to update and republish outdated blog content and bring them back to life.
Why should Update Old Blog Posts Updating your content gives a lot of benefits. Here are some reasons why you should update your old content.
1. Show Google that Your Content is Fresh Google likes fresh content and fresh sites rank better.
If you update your older blog posts, Google will give a better rank in search results. Additionally, Google displays the modified date in the SERPs that helps you get a high CTR on your blog post. If you are using the genesis framework theme on your site, here is a guide – How to Show Post’s Last Updated Date in Genesis Framework
2. Improve Blog Post Quality At the beginning of blogging, you will make many mistakes while writing content. As your blog becomes older, you also become an experienced blogger. And when you read your old content, then there will be some mistakes (Grammar, Spelling and more). You can improve your content by improving those mistakes. If you want to get rid of the low quality or shallow post, then you should update them.
3. Increases User Engagement If your content is outdated, visitors will not stay on your blog for a long time. They will immediately leave your site by clicking the back button. As a result, your site’s bounce rate will increase. And a higher bounce rate is not good for SEO Approaches and reflect your content is not engaging.
Updating old content with fresh information, you can keep visitors on your blog longer.
4. Increase Number of Comment Most of the older blog posts (evergreen post) do not have a comment or enough comment. You can republish them with fresh and new information. This will increase the number of comments on your article.
5. You can Fix Broken Links Broken links greatly influence visitor’s user experience and also it hurts your rankings on Google. However, there are several ways to fix broken links. You can use the plugin or a third-party website. When you find a broken link, you can update the similar content link. If there’s nothing similar, you can just delete the link. Fixing or deleting a broken link makes the page more valuable in Google’s eye and helps increase your ranking.
6. You can Link to Newer and Better Resources If you are updating your old content, you can add the best content. This makes your content more valuable to Google and readers. Furthermore, you’ve published articles on a related topic, you should link to this. It’s the best way to increase page views on your blog.
7. You can Share Your Content Again Search engines are also counting Social signals as ranking factors.
Updating your old post you can promote it like a new post. It will quickly skyrocket your blog traffic and ranking. You can also notify your reader via email.
8. You can Fix Issues with Recent Google Updates Google always updates to improve its algorithm. Make sure all your old content follows the best practices for Google’s latest changes. If not, then this is time to refresh old blog posts with Google algorithm.
Which Blog Posts should Update Before updating a blog post, it is important for you to know which post should be updated. The answer will be…You should update your old outdated blog posts and low traffic blog post. Below I have mentioned some conditions that you should consider. ● ● ● ● ●
Completely outdated blog post. Blog posts that do not get organic traffic. Update posts with zero comments. Low-quality content which does not provide any value. Short and thin content.
You can find less traffic blog post in Google analytic tool and consider refresh them. Just go to Google Analytics then click on Behavior >> Site Content >> All Pages. And set “Advanced Filter” for your pages that have received less than 10 pageviews in the last month.
How to Update Old Blog Posts If you are thinking of updating your old post, here are some things that you need to consider.
1. Add Fresh Information If your blog post has been outdated, you need to add a fresh perspective and information to it. Find related articles (recently published/updated)on the web and analyze how their content is better than your old content. Then make the changes to refresh your old blog posts.
2. Rewrite Your Title Title plays an important role to increase CTR on your content because many people read the title before reading a content. So after refreshing your content, make sure your title is catchy. If your title is not relevant, readable, or does not show your content value to visitors, you need to pay attention to your title. Here is a quick guide on how to write a catchy blog post title. ● ● ● ● ●
Keep post title short (50-60 characters). Use number in Title Use Modifiers Word ( “2019”, “best”, “guide”, “checklist”, “fast” and “review”) Keep your title clear so that it can easily explain your blog post. Use “When”, “Why” and “How”. These words make your titles more catchy.
3. Correct Your Grammar, Spelling and Improve Readability In the early days of bloggign, there may be grammatical and spelling errors. Correct them while updating your old blog posts. Apart from this, you may not even have used the proper heading tag. Heading tags helps you create a readable blog post. Suppose you write a post whose length is 5000-6000 words but does not use the right Heading Tags, then visitors will find it hard to read.
4. Write Shorter Paragraphs
Long and thick paragraphs scare readers to read them and hard to scan. Reader love to read short and clean paragraphs. Always try to keep your paragraphs short. It improves your content readability. Also, use bold and italic for your important line. It makes your content more scannable.
5. Add New Images in Your Post An image speaks a thousand words and keeps visitors on your website longer. If you update your long content (4,000 words), use images in it so that visitors are not boring. Make sure your image is high quality and looks great with your content layout. Also, do not forget to compress and resize before uploading your images. Here is a detailed guide to Image optimization for SEO But keep one thing, don’t use Google Images. They can be copyrighted and later can arise copyright problems. There are many websites available in the market (FreeDigitalPhotos, MorgueFile, Pixabay, Pexels etc) which offer free stock images.
6. Republish It After updating your old blog post, you can republish the blog post by changing the publication date in the WordPress Post Editor.
By doing this you can show your post again on the homepage. Alternatively, you can also make your blog post sticky. If you update your blog post very deeply, you can consider it for republishing. This strategy helps you get lots of traffic without publishing new content.
7. Add New Keyword I’m sure, you’ve made a lot of mistake in choosing keywords in the early days of blogging! Apart from this, the old keyword is not more effective. When you update your old posts, use the latest keywords as well as related keywords. There are many great tools and websites in the market that can help you in keyword research related to your article.
Include your main keywords in the title, Meta description and also add once in the 100 to 150 words of the article.
8. Add Internal Links Linking one page to another on the same domain is called internal linking.
It does not only improve your website SEO and pageviews but it makes your content more useful for visitors and also help to reduce bounce rate. Just add some & related links to your content. Too much and irrelevant linking can actually adversely affect your bounce rate and SEO. Here is a detailed guide to Internal Linking
9. Promote Your Content after Updating After updating your content, share it all popular social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. These sites help you to get good traffic on your posts. Also, tell your subscribers about the updated content with the newsletter. Here is an ultimate guide – Where To Promote Blog Posts After Publishing For Maximum Traffic
What Not to Update Don’t change the URL of your post. Also, if your post is already ranking well, then be careful about updating some elements such as the title and your keyword. Do not remove any such information, which is helping in the ranking.
Wrapping It Up
Updating old blog posts is the most important part of blogging. This strategy improves your search engine rankings and makes your content more valuable. If you use these strategies that I have mentioned in this article, will help to increase traffic on your old blog posts. And you will see an increase in overall traffic and conversions very fast. Hope you find this article helpful? Don’t forget to share! �